The Biggest Opportunity in the Future of Work

U+, in partnership with the ILO Institute, is excited to bring you highlights from ILO’s Weekly Virtual Gatherings. This time, we explore the organizational risks and opportunities of new productivity tools.

?As we look at emerging enterprise technologies today, we’re seeing large-scale opportunities for improvement in productivity because of new offerings from Microsoft, Google, and a handful of other enterprise productivity tool makers.

Back-end analytics programs are key. They can help employers see into what large numbers of their workers are best at, where natural teams can be built by matching workstyles and expertise, and where unexpected expertise and skills live among the workforce.

These programs also scare their makers and their potential users. They feel intrusive. They reveal, in some ways, too much. Getting firms ready to use this data responsibly, in pro-social ways, is critical. Even more important is for firms to earn the trust of their workforce – not to engineer a feeling of trustworthiness, but truly earning that trust over time.

Critically important is what happens to workers who are revealed – to their employers and to themselves – to be underperforming in key tasks. A bad move: getting rid of those folks. A vastly better move: identifying what those people are better at, and matching them to the tasks that they will likely find more satisfying, and perform far better.

That’s an important part of thinking about innovation less as a creating function, and more as a matching function. Matching workers with the work they’re best at is a gift for the workers, and a gift for customers, and a gift for employers. We’ve got a generation of new tools emerging now that can make this happen – if firms invest enough time, thought, and real care in earning the trust they’ll need to make this vision real.

The U+ method can efficiently and effectively lead the development, implementation, and improvement of innovations in any sector. To date, we have used this method to bring 100+ products to market, creating over $1 billion in value for Fortune 1000 companies. Check out U+ success stories here.

Launched in 2005, ILO is a membership organization for large companies, government agencies and not-for-profits, bringing senior executives leading innovation together for knowledge sharing and community building. ILO has completed more than 300 best-practice research reports, focusing on emerging challenges and opportunities. To learn more about ILO, membership benefits, and how to join, visit www.iloinstitute.net.?